How to customize your Profit and Loss report

The Profit and Loss report, also called the Income Statement or P&L report, summarizes your income and expenses for the year to know whether you're operating at a profit or loss.

The report shows subtotals for each income or expense account in your Chart of Accounts, with the last line showing your net income (or loss) for the year.

Run the Profit and Loss report

From the left menu, select Reports.

In the Search field, type Profit and Loss.

Select either Profit and Loss or Profit and Loss Detail where you can view he transaction details.

The Profit and Loss Details report is available in QuickBooks Online Essentials and QuickBooks Online Plus. If you use EasyStart, you can select the dollar amounts on your Profit and Loss report to view transaction details.

Customize the Profit and Loss report

You can customize your Profit and Loss report to fit your business needs. Customizing the report allows you to:

Compare current Profit and Loss reports to a different time period

Compare income and expenses by specific customers or suppliers, or by all customers or suppliers

Compare current Profit and Loss report to another time period

You can add columns for other time periods to the Profit and Loss report to easily compare different time periods.

To add data from different time periods to your Profit and Loss report:

In the open Profit and Loss report, select Customize.

In the Customize report panel, select the Rows/Columns drop-down.

Under Period Comparison, select the checkbox for each period to compare.Note that each period you select appears as a column on your report.

For each period you selected, specify whether to display differences as a $ change, % change, or % of YTD (for Year-To-Date).

Select Run report.

Compare income and expenses by customer or supplier

You can easily compare income and expenses by all customers or suppliers, or by those you specify.

Note: The available filters include All and Select All. While similar in name, they are very different.

All include both Specified transactions that use a customer or supplier's name, and Not Specified transactions that don't use a name but still affect the income or expense account.

Select all only includes Specified transactions.

To compare income and expenses for all customers or suppliers:

In the open Profit and Loss report, select Customize.

In the Customize report panel, select the Rows/Columns drop-down.

From the Columns drop-down, select Customers or Suppliers.

Select Run report.

To compare income and expenses for specific customers or suppliers:

In the open Profit and Loss report, select Customize.

In the Customize report panel, select the Filter drop-down.

Select the Customer or Supplier checkbox and select the appropriate name to view from the drop-down list in the Customer or Supplier field.

Select Run report.

Add different classes or locations or stores to your Profit and Loss report

If you have class or location tracking turned on, you can add different classes or locations to your Profit and Loss report.

To learn how to turn on class or location tracking, see turn on class tracking. Class tracking is only available in QuickBooks Online Plus.

In the open Profit and Loss report, select Customize.

In the Customize report panel, select the Rows/Columns drop-down.

From the Columns drop-down, select Classes or Locations.

Select Run report.

Customize your report's title or header or footer

You can customize the title, header, or footer for your Profit and Loss report.

In the open Profit and Loss report, select Customize.

In the Customize report panel, select the Header/Footer drop-down.

Under Header, enter the custom title for the report in the Report title field.

Select or clear the checkboxes of the other available Header or Footer options as appropriate.

In the Alignment section, use the drop-downs to specify how the header and footer information should be aligned.

Select Runreport.

Display specific accounts

By default, all income and expense accounts are included in the Profit and Loss report, but you can filter the report to display only specific accounts.

In the open Profit and Loss report, select Customize.

In the Customize report panel, select the Filter drop-down.

Select the Distribution Account checkbox.

From the Distribution Account drop-down, select the accounts to display. The list includes settings that let you select all of a specific type of account, as well as checkboxes that allow you to select specific accounts to include.

Select Run report.

Save your customized Profit and Loss report

After customizing your Profit and Loss and it looks the way you want it to, you can save the customized report for future viewing or to share with others

In the open, customized Profit and Loss report, select SaveCustomization.

In the Custom report name field, enter a descriptive title for the report.

Select Save.

You can now open the report from the Custom Reports tab.

Share with other account users

You can easily share your customized Profit and Loss report with all other users you’ve invited to your account.